Wheelchair Dancer Brings Technique to NH

Dancer kitty lunn sits gracefully, red hair pulled back in a bun.

She has every bit of the ballerina's pride and self-possession.

With a wave of her hand, lunn sends staff and students at the crotched mountain school scurrying.

"22 119 pat, can we borrow you for a second, and miles. you're gonna work with shayna, you're gonna do your arabesque. miles can you come up to the corner here, in your place before you enter the circle."

Some of the dancers can walk.

Others, like kitty lunn, use wheelchairs.

Lunn goes over a few moves that will integrate them into one dance.

Then she sets the wheels in motion, literally.

"myles wait, shayna go. straight across. jenny, madeline go."

16-year old shayna rolls in.

A staff member in a black leotard rides on the back of shayna's chair, one leg extended in a classic arabesque.

Then jenny rolls in from the opposite corner.

She grabs the back of a third chair and arcs around before spinning off in a different direction.

"jenny, lift your arm, keep going, let go, and off you go
23 200 good job, thank you"

It's a brief exercise, but it electrifies the students.

19-year old Miles is a strapping, dark-haired young man who speaks with the aid of a computer.

He glows with enthusiasm.

Miles uses just two words to describe what it's like to dance.

"totally cool"

Nearby, Jenny, who's seventeen, gushes.

"I love it, I just love to dance, it's just so pretty, and feels like I can fly."

Jenny has a full-blown case of dance fever.

She's thinking about teaching dance when she gets out of school.

That doesn't surprise Lunn.

She says Jenny approached her the minute she arrived at crotched mountain.

"I saw she had good upper body control and trunk strength so I asked if she wanted to sit in my dance chair. you wd have thought she won the lottery. we just rolled up and down the hallway and did some simple moves. and to watch the light in her eyes that this was magic."

The new york based dancer is excited to be able to reach students like jenny.

After all, Kitty Lunn is a victim of dance fever herself.

She fell in love with ballet at age 8.

By age 15 she was training with the Washington Ballet.

She went on to become a professional dancer.

17 years ago Lunn was rehearsing for a broadway show.

"I was leaving a bldg and I slipped on some ice, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke my back. I was in the hospital for nearly three years. lots of complications, lots of situations."

Lunn was paralyzed from the hips down.

At first she fought against her desire to dance.

But she felt incomplete.

Finally her husband convinced her to try her old art in a new way.

"36 136 so I took myself back to dance class, with fear and trembling, and started to transpose the technique of classical ballet. that was familiar to me. that was home."

Now kitty lunn dances in a custom built, ultralight wheelchair.

She's formed a company, infinity dance, that combines able-bodied and disabled dancers.

She travels around the world performing and teaching.

Along the way she's developed some pretty ambitious goals.

"37 00 I wanted to change the world's perception of what a dancer is. I also wanted to bring a professional excellence that was missing from disaiblity in art. so often in integrated dance the nondisabled dancers dance pretty well and the dancers in chairs are just rolling around smiling. it's assumed they will not be able to do it. //. I think that's the worst kind of discrimination possible."

AMB: music

A few hours later, kitty lunn rolls out on stage before an audience of students and staff.

She's let her hair down, perhaps foreshadowing the no-holds-barred performance she's about to give.

Her first dance is somewhat traditional.

Lunn glides around the stage in her wheelchair.

her legs are motionless, but she dances with her upper body, moving with the flowing gestures of ballet.

A second piece, called "in time like air," is more raw.

Lunn says it's semi-autobiographical.

"24 138 I call it a duet for me and my chair. and most of that piece is done out of the chair, using the chair in a different way."

Using her powerful upper body, lunn lowers herself to the floor.

She stretches her body full-length on the stage and rolls from front to back to side.

She reaches out to push, pull and spin the empty chair.

She drapes herself face-first over the chair and rolls the length of the stage.

At times the wheelchair seems to defeat her.

From underneath she looks out through the spokes, as if she?s in a cage.

But in the end she comes to terms with the chair.

In the end, it becomes a partner.

As lunn rolls around on the floor, a murmur of excitement ripples through the crowd.

The audience of young people?many also in wheelchairs seem to get her message .

Using a wheelchair doesn't mean the end of dancing.

It means the beginning of a new dance.

For NHPR news i'm Trish Anderton.